Weaving together a wide array of historical sources with oral accounts gathered from fieldwork, this classic study provides a valuable overview of traditional Creek (Muskogee) religion and medicine. John R. Swanton visited the Creek Nation in the early twentieth century and learned about many important aspects of Creek religious life and medicine. Subjects covered in this book include Creek conceptions of the cosmos; religious stories; death and the afterlife; spiritual forces and beings; various rituals, including the Busk ceremony; prohibitions; the power and skills of different religious practitioners; the cultural force of witchcraft; and herbal and spiritual remedies. Many of these beliefs and practices have been present throughout Creek history and persist today. Creek Religion and Medicine showcases the vibrant culture of an enduring southeastern Native people.
John R. Swanton (1873-1958) was a seminal figure in the study of southeastern Native peoples, with more than thirty books to his credit. James Taylor Carson is an assistant professor of history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the author of Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal (Nebraska 1999).
"John R. Swanton's Creek Religion and Medicine endures as one of the best sources for ethnohistorical information about the Muscogee Nation. Drawing from a broad spectrum of archival sources and oral histories collected from Native American informants, Swanton provides a rare glimpse of traditional Muscogean (Creek) religion and medicine. . . . This classic study is a must read for anyone interested in the Native Southeast."—Stacye Hathorn, The Alabama Review
